Residencies '19 - '20

Fiona Oikonomidou

"Getting to know who you are, and in extend which are your capacities, weaknesses, obsessions, limits, can be an adventurous journey. Cyclops, Sirens, Lotus-eaters, and “gods” who decide on your own fate. All these parameters will contribute to the process of getting to knowing yourself. The Odyssey of Homer is being used in my project as a metaphor. The 24 letters of the Greek alphabet which originally mark each of the 24 chapters of the book of Odyssey, are replaced by 24 new pictograms, each of them depicting an adventure, an obstacle, or an incident during the journey of Ulysses. This range of pictograms can be seen as new (non-phonetic) alphabet, which forms a new visual language and tells a story, like letters originally did: they communicated ideas.

At the same time, making patterns gives rhythm to my work. My love/obsession for order and repetition took form in a process of producing patterns by using two mathematical symmetries of numbers (Vedic Square, Fibonacci numbers). The element used as the base of all the patterns is an abstract form that appears in the old-Greek ornaments and works as the link to my Greek roots. During my residency at FMC my main aim was to add more abstraction, tactility and sensitiveness to the “strict” digital lines of my patterns, by experimenting with printmaking techniques such as lithography, silkscreen and risograph."